


life is but a heartbeat away

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Horror, Implied Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 11:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15095594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Beauregard loves her brother.





	life is but a heartbeat away

**Author's Note:**

> "What happens if you have a childhood, but it’s barely a childhood because it was supposed to be someone else’s childhood, but it was you instead... is that a childhood?"
> 
> \- Beau, C2E16
> 
> (Please, please let it die  
> Or brother this is my last goodbye  
> I'm begging you)
> 
> \- "Veritas", Kamelot
> 
> (fills my genprompt_bingo square 'Horror')

Beauregard's brother is a wiry thing, long black hair and deep brown skin and milky white eyes, arms that know how to hold a baby and a voice that could move a mountain if he tried.

He's the first thing she remembers, and for a long time he's the only thing she remembers. He holds her when she's too angry to sleep and too scared to call for her parents. He puts her in the dirt and laughs when she crawls away, watches her taste all the growing things and never tells her to take something out of her mouth.

He looks just like her, tells her they're going to be unstoppable together and she believes him, because it never occurs to her not to. They talk about running away, about dying into the future, about ghosts, and sometimes when it's ghosts she thinks they've never stopped talking.

Beau loves her brother, always.

 

**

 

Beauregard's brother is a poor imitation of a wanted thing, hidden away in shame, not taught to do all the things the elder twin should.

That's what Beau tells herself, anyway. Easier than wondering why she has to make nice with the clients, balance the books, get scolded not for nicking the wine but for shaming the family name.

Easier than wondering why her father says _I wanted a son and I got you instead_ when he has son and daughter both hiding in the grapevines, poking through the chests in the attic. Easier than wondering why she has to sit for portrait after portrait and her brother never has to.

She's living for both of them, or maybe just him, and it's already hurting before she knows how to say it hurts. She's only alive when she's with him, in the other life they've created where it's just them.

Beau loves her brother, anyway.

 

**

 

Beauregard's brother is an invisible thing, after she meets other travellers, after they become the Mighty Nein.

She supposes it's for the best, really. Leaving family, leaving home, better make it complete, right? But her brother wasn't really family, not like the ones she left, and he really wasn't home, so sometimes she can't figure out where he is, why he didn't follow, why he isn't poking at the shaved bits of her skull reminding her how angry their father's going to be.   

It's fine until it isn't, until Yasha leaves in the middle of the night and Beau doesn't have anyone not annoying to share watches with.

Her brother is standing by her fire and he's smiling with Beau's mouth, hands outstretched, except it isn't her brother because her brother should have grown up.

"What's wrong, Beau?" The voice is hers. The words aren't. They're his. They're her -

"I thought you always wanted a brother."

Beau has always had a brother that she loved.

 

**

 

Beauregard's brother is a hungry thing. He's eating the light all around them, the fires and the stars and the green shine her goggles give the world.

It's only them in the dark now, like when they were both little. She doesn't have time to wonder why she doesn't want to tell him to stop.

She's had a brother for twenty-three years and never once been scared of him. Not when she fell out the window and he was a second too late to catch her, not when the wine he stole landed her ill in bed for a week and left him untouched. 

Because Beau loves her brother.

 

**

 

Of course, she's never seen her brother bleed before, either.

He still looks just like her.

He still sounds just like her.

Because Beau loves her brother.


End file.
